"Elephants in modern warfare" Topic

"…Though the days of elephant offensive operations were over, elephants still proved useful in logistics and in support functions as pack animals. During World War I, armies pressed a few circus elephants into service to haul heavy equipment and artillery.

However, it was during World War II that a man named James Howard "Elephant Bill" William would show the world what elephants could do.

William was a British World War I veteran and infantry officer who supervised mules and camels while in the service. After the war, he moved to Burma and worked at the Bombay Burmah Trading Company, and became a supervisor of the company's elephants, working to transport heavy goods and supplies through the jungle…"
Full article here.
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Amicalement
Armand

Sorry but I found this to be a childish article written by someone who obviously just did a google search on war elephants. The Macedonian and Succesor armies did not use elephants in combat until after Alexander's death. They were an extremely effective weapon system otherwise these highly skilled generals would not have used them or spent great sums of money acquiring and training them. Reports of elephants going berserk on their own troops are greatly exaggerated and I have found that this occurs more on the wargame table, because of biased rules sets, than in the historical record. At Zama, Hannibal, out of desperation, was forced to used untrained circus elephants and elephants meant for the arena
alongside his trained war elephants. Hannibal was not an idiot as this
article suggests. It has been quite popular of late to downplay the elephants battlefield effectiveness just like in the early 70s when everyone said that the tanks days on the battlefield were over. Hmmm….tanks are still around and pretty effective….where are all those "experts" now? Oh, I know, picking on ancient war elephants. lol

During the wars in Indo-China, elephants were used thru out the region to move logs and such. And of course during WWII, units like Merrill's Marauders used mules to move their supplies …